If you are an 85-year-old in Virginia living at home and hoping to get vaccinated for COVID, you'd better be black or Hispanic if you're in a hurry.  A new wave of racism is sweeping across the country in the guise of "anti-racism" or "equity."  A better term is "neo-racism," for unlike the previous waves of state-sanctioned racism under slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow (all of them largely at the hands of Democrats), this wave of racism claims to be about fighting racism, though, in fairness, it is also largely being implemented at the hands of Democrats.

Judicial Watch explains:

In a move that is outraging senior citizens throughout Virginia, the state is shifting its COVID-19 vaccination distribution to prioritize black and Latino residents even as desperate 85-year-olds interviewed by Judicial Watch struggle to get the shot. Like several other states, Virginia is vaccinating its population in phases, with healthcare personnel and residents of long-term care facilities receiving utmost priority. With that population completed, according to the Virginia Department of Health, the second group includes a peculiar combination of frontline workers, people 65 and over, those with medical conditions, incarcerated criminals and those living in homeless shelters or "migrant labor camps."

As if it were not bad enough that law-abiding seniors are considered as important to Virginia officials as convicts and illegal immigrants, now comes another slap in the face. In the next few weeks, the state will give preference to black and Latino residents 65 and over while much older white seniors, many in their 80s, cannot secure an appointment to get inoculated. The plan was announced a few days ago by Dr. Danny Avula, who was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam this year to be the state's vaccine coordinator. A Richmond news report calls it the latest step taken by Virginia to bake equity into its vaccination policies. In recent weeks, the article says, roughly 10,000 vaccines were channeled specifically toward trusted clinics in neighborhoods with older black residents. (snip)

A computer-savvy, 85-year-old Virginia man who has tried in vain for weeks to get vaccinated told Judicial Watch the new state order giving minorities preference is "particularly disturbing." The man and his wife, also in her 80s, do not want to be identified because they are still trying to get the vaccine and fear criticizing the system might hurt their chances. In January the couple, residents of a suburb about 65 miles south of Richmond, signed up on the state website but lost their place after being told that the site was compromised. They have since tried signing up repeatedly with no luck. Many of their elderly friends are in the same discouraging situation, the couple said. "The governor has decided who gets the vaccine based on race/ethnicity," said another elderly Virginian who cannot get the shot after learning about the new distribution plan in a local media report. "The governor is a disgrace," said a Virginia native in her mid-80s.

There is no question that the intent of these measures is to racially discriminate.  Richmond.com provides the logic being used by the state:

Black Virginians are dying from COVID-19 at 1.2 times the rate of white residents when adjusted for population, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Latinos are being infected at more than double the rate of whites. In October, the rate was five times higher than whites.

Yet national data has revealed vast disparities between where the virus has devastated communities and where shots are given. In Virginia, white residents are getting vaccinations at 2.2 times the rate of Black residents.

Factors include a history of discriminatory lending practices that pushed these populations into areas with less access to health care, limited internet and a lack of transportation. All of that is on top of navigating a fractured health care system that's in many ways shut them out.

Oddly, there is no mention of the widely reported reluctance of many Black people to take a vaccine in the wake of the Tuskegee atrocity; it is all about victimology.  One of the fundamental tenets of neo-racism is that victim classes have no personal agency, no ability to affect their situation.  They are acted upon, not actors, which is terribly dehumanizing.  But that element of racism is a major component of neo-racism.  Like the old racism, it sees certain groups as inferior.  But the neo-racists translate that into an imperative to discriminate against other groups, as if racial discrimination is a good thing if the right people (in their mind) are discriminated against.

Virginia is far from the only state eying race as a criterion for vaccinations.  Here is a screen shot of California's questionnaire for people applying for vaccinations:

Martin Luther King's dream of judging us on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin, fades away in the rearview mirror of the car being driven by the neo-racist Democrats.